how the west was won: 2009

Since golden leaves are still clinging to branches here, I can

be relieved that I am not as far behind as I feel. (Right? ) Here it is, Christmas, and I am still playing catch up from the fall. Wearing my ballet flats with no socks... yes, Autumn just left only hours ago. To answer your question, "What have we been up to?" Here goes.

Growing. This little one has a new favorite past time of clapping. 7 months now. Makes mama sad.

Winning. I really did have a most lucky day and won a contest. Received this darling, handmade apron in the mail for my prize. Just in time for holiday baking.

Watching. Sometimes the kiddos interact and fail to care even when being sat upon or having clothes eaten. Laughter and love. All worth it.

Catching up. With old friends at a little-kid-friendly, amusement park. Weekend get away. Perfect.

I think I'm in love. (Alright, I was three months ago when I intended to write this post.)

In every second I found on the road or while feeding a baby, I had my nose stuck in a book. A good one (or two).

I'll admit that I've lived under a journalistic rock for the last while, but in case you haven't you may already know of the author I am to praise. Anna Quindlen, former New York Times columnist, current writer for Newsweek. I recently discovered her and can't get enough.

It only took a few minutes into her A Short Guide to a Happy Life for me to start falling. "I know many inventive ways to hold a baby while nursing." Hey, this is my kind of woman.

Patricia Volk agrees, "Anna Quindlen is America's Resident Sane Person. She has... the common touch, the ability to speak to many people about what's on their minds before they have the vaguest idea what's on their minds."

Ditto.

Most of the insight I enjoyed came from a collection of her works in Loud and Clear. Rather than stumble over my words, I'll let her do the talking.

Motherhood:

"Mothering consists largely of transcendent scut work, which seems contradictory, which is exactly right. How can you love someone who drives you so crazy and makes such constant demands? How can you devote yourself to a vocation in which you are certain to be made peripheral, if not redundant? How can we joyfully embrace the notion that we have ceased to be the center of our own universe?"

"Why in the world am I sitting here trying to recall how many hours my children spent playing with blocks when they were small? Why am I trying to tote up the time I spent reading Pat the Bunny versus the time I spent wheeling them around supermarket aisles talking to myself?"

"Sometimes, missing my mother, I lose track of whether I am missing a human being or a way of life. Our mothers only slowly become people to us, as we grow older and they do, too... There is something primitive about this love and this loss. What does it mean, to sleep beneath the heart of another person, safe and warm, for almost a year? No scientist can truly say."

"The secret is that there is no secret. There is no formula, much as I once looked for in the pages of Spock and Penelope Leach, believing that child-rearing was algebra and that if I studied hard enough I would succeed."

"But we are only human, and being a parent is a very difficult job, more difficult than any other, because it is twenty-four/seven, because it is unpaid and unrewarded much of the time, because it requires the shaping of other people, which is an extraordinary act of hubris...Sometimes we had a hard time figuring out where you ended and we began."

On Mother's Day... "It is silly because something as fleeting and finite as twenty-four hours is the antithesis of what it means to mother a child. That is the work of ages."

Society:

On modern feminism.... "That work, influence, even power with no countervailing forces, no intimacy, no family, no sense of connection to others, is for many of us, no kind of life at all. We women know what matters, once we combine our demands for equality with our desire for meaning.... We finally found ourselves where we belonged, and that was everywhere." Let us "be careful to not have gained the whole world and lost our own souls."

Life:

"I have seen your salvation, and it is you, staring back at yourself, your eyes, and windows to your heart and mind... The prizes arrive, but soon they get dusty, and then what do you have? You better have you."

"I am successful on my own terms... if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your soul, it is not success at all."

"It is to easy to exist instead of live." Be not someone that, "has a to-do list, but not a life."

Consider the following from People Magazine, "Always insightful, rooted in everyday experience and common sense...Quindlen is so good that even when you disagree with what she says, you still love the way she says it."

Double ditto.

And that's what I loved so much. In contrast to the good I found in Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, who rightfully so, teaches as a "scientist"(On speaking of life and how to spend precious time..."Engineering isn't about perfect solutions; it's about doing the best you can with limited resources." "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is the most valuable thing you have to offer."), Anna Quindlen teaches you as an artist. I found it in A New Roof on an Old House and Fall from the Nest especially.

Hungry? Google Anna, dust off the library card or hit your local Borders. Sink your teeth in. Isn't it just delicious?